Storms on the Seven Seas

We’re Sailing Away... From Pirates. And/Or Fighting Them.

OR: Get Your Towels Ready, Its About to Go Down!

20

JAN/15

We’re Sailing Away… From Pirates. And/Or Fighting Them.

OR: Get Your Towels Ready, Its About to Go Down!

When we last left Our Heroes… well it was a while ago. Anyway, now they are on a boat! Sailing with the mercenary crew of the Harpy’s Call, captained by the esteemed (some might say haughty) Halvard the Paladin, on their way to fight pirates in the North and attempt to recover Lady Ari.

Before sailing North Draco made sure to re-stock is supply of ball bearings and found a new toy, or rather lots of new toys, in a bag of caltrops. Anyone fighting Draco from this point better watch their feet! That is, if they even have feet! (Oooh, foreshadowing!)

During the journey up North the group takes turns taking watches, seeing a few ships, and mostly keeping their distance from any other signs of life. At one point a galleon started to follow the Harpy’s Call, trying to catch up to it. Everyone made some checks, mostly they went well, sometimes they didn’t. At one point Zed decided he wanted to get all fancy and shimmied up a mast in order to jump off and snag a line that had come loose. Everyone was very impressed. Eventually the galleon started to close the gap, until it was in range of the Harpy’s ballista. At this point, thanks to a barrel of oil and a flaming sphere from Akenara the group was able to set the approaching ship’s sails on fire, and then outpace them.

At the end of the night Niko saw another pirate ship swiftly approaching, and it looked like there would be no out running it this time. The ship had a greenish glow, which helped Captain Hal identify it as the Pearlescent Pearl – a pirate ship said to be crewed by the dead. This sounds rather inviting to Our Heroes, who were itching for a fight at this point. Although it seemed like it was going to take a bit to scratch that itch for most of the party, but Della and Aken were all about that fiery arrow business, and started taking shots at the Pearly Pearl. While they were doing that, the rest of the party prepared by… not doing much of anything really. There were talks of setting up traps for once the combat became hand to hand, but it was determined that these might be more of a hindrance to the crew than a help.

At this point, with nothing directly in front of him he could punch, Draco started thinking of ways to get closer to things he could punch. He, Bregg the Barbarian Cook and Steve the First Mate decided to lower the longboat and try to sneak off a bit in order to board the boat from the back side and attack the ghost pirates from the rear. With the boats closing into arrow range a few more of the fighters got in the mix, until eventually the party could start to make out the actual people (if you could call them that) on the approaching ship. There were a few skeletal humanoids that were slightly green looking roaming around on the deck, one of which was large and muscley, along with a ghouly looking dude and a white ghouly looking lady. In the crows nest there was a disembodied skull that was straight up on fire.

They looked weird, and Our Heroes had already been shooting at them with giant arrows, so they figured diplomacy was probably not an option at that point. Ron, ranger extraordinaire, hopped on the Harpy’s second ballista and proceeded to shoot tree trunks at the larger skeleton. The stealth boat crew successfully climbed up the back side of the enemy ship, and immediately got freaked out by the Banshee, but not so much that they didn’t start attacking it. Aken found out quite to his dismay that the already on fire floating skull head was immune to more fire, but Niko found out the ghoul was decidedly not, and started flinging scorching rays from his sniper tower up in the crows nest. The banshee made a lot of noise, people hit things with swords, overall it was a good old fashioned brawl. At one point Draco tried to throw an axe at the floating banshee, only to miss terribly and send it straight through the longboat, making a sizeable hole in the bottom of it. Zed also started to talk shit to the banshee, reminding her that no one liked her and she wasn’t fun at parties and her hair was stupid. It got personal. Near the end of the fight Aken decided he wanted to be on the enemy boat, and 15 feet isn’t that far really, and decided to jump for it, tossing off a sacred flame that finished off the banshee at the same time. So what if she only had a single hit point left, it still counts! Unfortunately his landing was less than graceful, and he proceeded to slide into the mast quite painfully.

At this point with all of the main baddies dead the ship started to vanish out from under Our Heroes. So did they immediately escape back to safety? Of course not! There was loot to be had! In the captains room Zed found a few nifty items, a compass and a small chest with a wand inside. In the main hold there was quite a bit of gold, a nice weapons rack, and a really creepy looking chest with dried blood around it. Zed was called in, due to his confidence in all things lock-picky, and was able to pop it open revealing some more gold, gems, and a nice magical ring. At this point the ship was very nearly just air, so Our Heroes got off it with as much stuff as they could carry.

Will our Heroes learn the nature of the weapons and ring they found? Were any of the items cursed, like maybe the shawl that a freaking banshee was wearing? Would anyone remember that they were supposed to be rescuing… someone? Find out next time!